“And so you slew him.”
He nodded without looking at her, and she could see still the embers of wrath in his eyes.
“I slew him in his own manor, finding him alone, and ready to justify himself with lies. Honour does not love such deeds; but what would you?—Britain is free of a viper.”
“And you have blood on your hand.”
He winced slightly, and glanced at his fingers as though she had not spoken in metaphor.
“All is blood in these days,” he said.
“And what think you of such laws?” she ventured, with a supreme reaching after the requirements of her Order. “What of the Cross?”
“There was blood upon it.”
“But the blood of self-sacrifice.”
Her words moved him more than she had purposed. His dark face flushed, and light kindled in his eyes as though the basal tenets of his life had been called in question. He glowed like a man whose very creed is threatened. Igraine watched the fire rising in him with a secret pleasure,—the love of a woman for the hot courage of a man.